A judge in New Brunswick, Canada, recently blocked joint custody of a father of three for his refusal to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new report.
The parents have shared custody of their three children, including a 10-year-old immunocompromised child, since they separated in 2019. The mother asked for the custody agreement to be amended last year because the father and his new wife refused to be vaccinated. The mother said she was concerned about the couple’s unvaccinated status due to her daughter’s ongoing treatment for non-cancerous tumors in her blood vessels, CBC News reported.
Judge Nathalie Godbout said her decision last Monday was taken with a “heavy heart” but it was for the good of the child given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the recent increase in cases related to the Ômicron variant.
The judge said the father’s refusal to be vaccinated has consequences for him and his children, who “should have the best possible chance of avoiding Covid-19 infection”.
She claimed to have given her father “generous” time to exercise his parenting over the phone or via video calls while he remains unvaccinated, the Toronto Star reported. If the father gets the vaccine, she can make an urgent request to the court to regain custody.
Although the father did not give his consent for the children to be vaccinated, the court ruled that the mother could go ahead with vaccinating the children.
“This is not a case where she wants to take the children away from the father,” said Grant Ogilvie, the mother’s attorney in the case, the CBC reported. “It’s about what’s best for the kids, period. She acknowledged that the decision will have an impact on the children, but said, ‘I have to do what’s best for them.’
The case comes around the same time a Quebec resident lost custody of his 12-year-old son from December to February because of his refusal to be vaccinated, according to BBC News. The father in that case asked to extend his vacation visitation time with his children when the mother claimed in court that she discovered he had not been immunized and used her social media to post anti-vaccinations.
The Quebec judge ruled that it was not “in the child’s best interest to have contact with the parent” due to the increase in Covid-19 cases in the area at that time.
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